Math & Games – a Winning Combination {A Sunya Review}

Last year, I instituted Fun Fridays in our homeschool to add variety, fun, and hands on application to our studies. It is definitely a popular feature around here! I’m always looking for more ways to add to our rotation of activities, so I was more than happy to have the opportunity to try out a new math card game with my young learners.

Our Sunya game even arrived on a Friday, and the package was ripped open as soon as we got it in the door! Sunya: The Magic and Wonder of Math and Science Adding & Subtracting from Sunya Publishing is a new game and is still under development. It was pretty exciting to have the opportunity to try out a brand new product! The game comes with an instruction/guide book, two decks of cards, and a number line. The first deck of cards contains cards numbered 1 through 9 (with dots to help), as well as addition, subtraction, and equal signs. The second deck is a set of 30 fact & riddle cards that are not used in the game, but are a fun bonus that my 8 year old found endlessly entertaining.

We didn’t end up playing Sunya that first Friday evening (Friday night is also Family Games or Movie Night at our house) because the game came with a whole book of instructions — and it’s really hard to read and comprehend instructions with all three girls trying to get in on the action. It turned out thought, that even with a quiet house of sleeping kids, I still couldn’t quite make out the instructions. After enlisting my husband’s help, I think we finally got it figured out, and the game itself is quite simple. Each player is dealt a hand of cards that they can use to make a part or whole of “number sentence” ie an addition or subtraction equation. If they can’t play any cards, they draw new cards until they can. The first player to use up all the cards in their hand goes out and says “SUNYA!” (a Sanskrit word for zero or empty) to win the game.

We’ve played the game quite a few times now, and my girls are still excited to play each time. Although the game is designed for ages 7+, my 5 year old is also able to participate with some help. She uses the number line included in the game to help with the questions she is less familiar with. I’m really happy to be able to include her, even at her beginning stage of mathematics. And the practice is great for my oldest, who really needs to make sure that her addition and subtraction facts stay fresh in the mind.

There are actually two other games or ways of playing outlined in the instruction book, but we haven’t gotten to them yet. I really struggle to understand written instructions (visual and kinesthetic learner here!) and I’m still finding the book confusing. My usual method for learning new games is to watch YouTube videos, but this is such a new game that YouTube is of no help! Because the game is still being developed, the manual we were sent included pages both in colour and in grey scale. The pages in colour were definitely easier to understand (especially as some of the directions referred to certain parts of the instructions being written is specific colours), but I really feel that any further development in this product should be invested in making the directions shorter, clearer, and small enough to to be stored with the cards in a box.

If you are looking for math games, you might want to consider checking out this new game.